If I could go back and hand a note to the twenty-five-year-old version of me, here are some things I would write:
“Definitely marry Lisa. You won’t regret it.”
“Have plenty of kids. And don’t stress about your oldest—she ends up fine.”
“Know God. Don’t just serve Him. You tend to spend your time accomplishing tasks. God wants you to sit with Him. It’s not a waste of time.”
“When you start your church, don’t just copy others. Study the Bible with fresh eyes, and search for what He actually commands. You will be constantly tempted to do what you want or what others want. Do what pleases God most. The years will fly by faster than you can imagine. You are going to face God sooner than you know, so don’t let people talk you out of your convictions.”
We would all do things differently if we could go back and relive the last twenty-five years. One of the blessings in my life is that I actually had an opportunity to start over. God gave me a chance to start another church, and the older (hopefully wiser) me is approaching Church much differently than the younger me did. We are still far from what I believe the Church can become, but I am loving the process.
While part of me wishes I had spent my whole life doing things this way, I also see how God used the path I took for His glory. In hindsight, I see how God used even my pride for His purposes. When Cornerstone was growing, some pastors tried to convince me that growing smaller churches was a better strategy for cultivating the love and obedience God wanted. In my arrogance, I thought to myself, They are only going small because they are incapable of building a large church and their vision isn’t as big as mine. It’s great they are being faithful with the three talents they have been given. I need to be faithful with the eight or nine talents He has given me. That is so embarrassing to publicly admit, but maybe some will find my confession helpful. There is a prevailing attitude that the best thing we can do is build the largest church we are capable of building. Maybe my flawed journey can dispel notions that going small is merely the default of the less competent and show that it can actually be a choice made out of biblical conviction and a desire to reach the masses.
I went back and forth trying to decide whether I even wanted to write this chapter. Up to this point, the book has been about biblical absolutes. I have addressed sin issues that no church can afford to ignore. These are clear commands from the mouth of God. You would be crazy to see failure in these areas and do nothing.
I don’t want to confuse the issue now by writing about my current church experience, but I know there are a lot of people who are curious how we try to flesh out these commands in twenty-first-century America. The purpose of this chapter is to describe some things we have done in an effort to be obedient to the commands mentioned in the previous chapters. Those commands are perfect and holy, and my hope in this book is simply to motivate you to change anything necessary in order to be obedient.
If our church in San Francisco grows to one hundred thousand people, then you shouldn’t be motivated more. And if it shrinks to a dozen people, then you shouldn’t be motivated less. God’s commands are sacred. They came from the mouth of God. That should be more than enough to motivate our tireless pursuit of obedience. If one of my pastors suddenly has a moral failure next week (God forbid), it doesn’t negate the truth of everything that has been written thus far. Okay, I think I’ve made enough disclaimers. You get the point.
The New Testament avoids laying out a model for precisely how the Church ought to be structured. The biblical authors could have been very clear on this, but instead, they leave us with a lot of freedom. I think that’s important, and it’s part of preserving the mystery of the Church.
This doesn’t mean that structure does not matter. I have learned from years of attending and pastoring churches that we have to be intentional about the way we structure our churches, because it dictates the direction the church will go. Solid, biblical structure is absolutely necessary to keep us from going astray.
Your church model often communicates your true theology. In reexamining what the Church was meant to be, Tim Chester and Steve Timmis borrowed the concept of “heretical structures” from John Stott. Here’s how this works. I’m assuming your church’s doctrinal statement says something about every believer using his or her spiritual gifts to manifest the Holy Spirit. That’s good theology. But let me ask you this: Does your church structure convey a different theology? Does your structure demonstrate that the gift of every believer matters? Or does it suggest that only the gifts of the teaching pastor, a couple ministry leaders, and a few musicians matter? If so, you’re functioning with a heretical structure. Your heretical structure almost certainly speaks louder than your orthodox theological statement. “The theology that matters is not the theology we profess but the theology we practice.”1
I continue to run into people who assume certain modern traditions are necessities. The reality is that some of these optional practices can actually hinder the Church from living out the biblical principles meant to shape the Church. There are elements of modern churches that on the surface seem like good ideas, but they can actually keep us from the biblical vision of unity, true fellowship, mutual love, and pursuit of the mission. Too many look at these elements and insist you can’t have a church without them.
As I write this, my wife is in the garage. I can hear her clearing the shelves of stuff we have accumulated over the past few years. I love it when we purge. Sometimes it actually feels as if I can breathe better when clutter is removed. Maybe you’ve seen an episode or two of Hoarders? It’s suffocating to watch people accumulate so much junk they can barely walk in their own homes. Haven’t there been times when you have felt suffocated by the busyness at a Christian event? Something in you longs for more space to breathe, more room for God to move.
I recently took my family on vacation. For four days, we lived in a cabin in the snow. I made a rule for our vacation: no electronics. No phones, video games, TVs, or computers. I know what some of you are thinking: How did you survive? How did you convince your whole family to live like savages for four whole days? My rule wasn’t exactly met with cheers of celebration, but they knew Dad’s intentions. As I expected, the absence of electronic devices forced us to entertain one another. The days were filled with snowball fights, sledding, snowboarding, building fires, playing board games, talking, laughing—you know, all the things humans used to do before we discovered smartphones. As you probably guessed, we had an absolute blast and came home more bonded as a family. In fact, some of the kids suggested we do this on every vacation! By removing electronic devices, we made more room for one another.
I think we would be surprised by how much more we would experience if we had less. Imagine if the Church purged until all that was left was a group of people with a Bible, a cup, and some bread. For some that sounds boring; for others it sounds ideal. For many around the world, that is all they have ever known of Church and they love it. We might all benefit from a simpler experience of Church. It would lead to deeper relationships and a stronger dependence on God. We might find that the things we added to improve our churches are the very things that crowd God out.
Some of our additions are birthed from a lack of faith. We don’t really expect God to move, so we fill our gatherings with exciting elements that will entertain people even if God does nothing. This won’t work in the long run. Eventually the people will no longer be amused with the type of excitement they can find at the movies. They came to the Church to find something otherworldly. Don’t be afraid of silence. Don’t be afraid to develop gatherings that will be dull if God doesn’t move. Days of praying together in an upper room require faith and patience, but the payoff will be worth it. We have to stop assuming that bigger and busier is always better than smaller and simpler. We can’t keep increasing production as a substitute for genuine expressions of the Spirit in ordinary, nonprofessional people.
In 2013 I gathered about twenty people at my house. I didn’t have a detailed plan, just a lot of convictions. At our first gathering, I remember saying I wanted us to be focused on pursuing everything I saw in the New Testament. I wanted to see deep familial love and for all of us to be using our gifts. I made it clear that I would not be the pastor forever. Instead, during the six to twelve months I led the church, I would disciple four people and help them become pastors so when our church multiplied into two churches, each church would be led by two of the pastors I had discipled.
We became such a tight family that everyone hated when it came time to multiply, but we understood it was necessary so we could grow and produce more leaders.
We have made many changes over the years, and I anticipate more. While the church will be in constant change, the elders have tried to keep us focused on some core values. Though the wording has changed over time, this is basically what we are striving to produce.
Devoted Worshippers. We want to be people who are committed to worshipping God, people who can’t get enough of Him, not people who worship only when it is convenient or when the right people are leading. It must be the Object of our worship that makes worshipping exciting to us.
Loving Families. We want to be people who love one another deeply and show this by how we sacrifice for one another. Our goal is not merely to get along but to love one another to the extent that Christ loved us and to be united to the extent that the Father is one with the Son.
Equipped Disciple Makers. We want everyone trained up to make disciples. No one should come as a consumer, but we need everyone to come as a servant using his or her gifts to build up the body.
Spirit-Filled Missionaries. We want to be people with supernatural character, who regularly share the gospel with neighbors and coworkers. Some will go to foreign countries to share Christ where He has not been heard. The others will support those who have gone.
Suffering Sojourners. We want to be people who are eagerly waiting for the return of Christ. We are willing and wanting to suffer because we believe in heavenly rewards. Far from seeking comfort, we thrive on hardship, refusing to become citizens of this earth.
This is what we are after as a church. We don’t want to get caught up in anything that will distract us from these things. For this reason, we have a few daily and weekly practices. As I said earlier, structure matters. It’s easy to say these are our values, but unless we structure in weekly practices to achieve these goals and structure out anything that distracts, we will never become the church we want to be.
Below are some of the practices we have found helpful in achieving our values.
Daily Bible Readings. We want people to be obsessed with Jesus. We believe the most effective way of cultivating this is by spending time alone with God in the Scriptures daily. Our members follow the same reading plan, which enables us to talk about the Scriptures with one another daily.2
Meet in Homes. There are more than fifty “one another” commands that call us to care for one another in a supernatural way. God wants meaningful interactions when we gather. For this reason, we keep our churches small (ten to twenty people), meeting in homes to create a family atmosphere. This way each person can be known and use his or her gifts to bless others.
Multiply Leaders. In Luke 10:2, Jesus told His disciples to pray that God would send more workers out into the world. For this reason, we pray and constantly develop new pastors and elders to be sent out. Each church has two pastors, who train future pastors for the next church plant. Pastors are the spiritual parents of the congregation, having both the responsibility and the authority.
Elder Authority. Some of you have experienced a form of home churches where the leader is rebelling against authority and simply doing what he or she wants to do. That’s not healthy. The size of the church has nothing to do with this point. As we have seen, God designed His Church to function under the leadership and humble, service-oriented authority of elders (1 Pet. 5:1–4). At a time when everyone bashes leadership, God calls us to show the world something different: people who love having a King and joyfully follow godly leaders.
Everyone Discipled. It is the Church’s responsibility to bring people to maturity (Eph. 4:11–16). Jesus set a wonderful example of living life with His disciples. We expect every member to have a more mature believer shepherding him or her toward maturity and greater holiness.
Everyone Disciples. Jesus rose from the dead and then commanded His followers to make disciples (Matt. 28:16–20). He was calling them to share the good news with those who didn’t know Him, teaching them to obey His commands. We want all our members to share the gospel with those who don’t believe and to teach them to become disciple makers.
Everyone Exercises Gifts. Paul said, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7). He went on to list various gifts and emphasized the necessity of each member. We create space for everyone to contribute at gatherings and in everyday life. We aim for total participation, where each member blesses others with his or her gifts.
Regular Multiplication of Churches. We must stay focused on reaching those who don’t know Jesus (Acts 1:8). It is so easy for house churches to become selfish rather than missional. We naturally run toward comfort. Our churches aim to multiply annually to maintain a healthy pressure toward developing leaders and reaching more people. Let’s face it: without deadlines, not much gets done.
Simple Gatherings. The early church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). We want the same. We want believers excited to break bread and wonder at the mystery of His body. We want people thrilled to come before a holy God in prayer. So we work hard to keep from adding elements to our gatherings that could distract us from what we must be devoted to.
Share Possessions. “And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44–45). The early church was known for how they cared for one another. They focused on eternity and cared little about earthly possessions. We joyfully share our resources as we learn of needs locally and around the world (2 Cor. 8:1–15).
Assume Missions. God wants to be worshipped by every nation and language (Rev. 7:9–10). There are still billions who have never heard the gospel.3 For this reason, we ask everyone to consider going to unreached people groups. Rather than assuming you are staying until you hear a word from God, it seems more biblical to assume you are going unless you believe God called you to stay.
I don’t believe we have found the solution for the future church, only a solution. But the changes we’ve made have felt more like the New Testament Church than anything I’ve ever encountered in the States. Again, I’m not trying to push the model we’ve been running with, but I do think we’d all benefit from innovative thinking where we jump back to the essentials, forget about “what we’ve always done,” and ask what expressions of Church God wants to see in our setting.
I believe God is leading a movement in this country toward simple, smaller gatherings, and I long to see this movement gain greater traction. I get so excited when I dream about the Church spreading in small, invigorating expressions that look and feel like the early church. My goal is to get you dreaming about this as well.
Recently the president of a well-known missions agency was sharing his concerns about the current state of missions. His burden was that we have been sticking to our old methods even though the unreached world has changed. Why are we still training missionaries to build churches when most of the unreached live in countries where it is illegal to plant a church? He shared about the desperate need for Christians to have an impact on closed countries. The only way this can happen is if we expand our narrow church experience. Our parameters for church expression must revert back to what is biblical rather than sticking to what is normal at this cultural moment. If we continue to promote a model where people flood to a church building to congregate around a preacher, how do we expect to reach the billions of people who live where that model is illegal?
If our missionaries have to reject everything we’ve ever taught them about Church in order to reach another country, are we confident what we’re doing here is best? Whether or not you believe smaller gatherings are the best method of church planting in the States, pretty much everyone agrees it’s the only way to plant churches in many countries. But how do we expect to successfully send people to plant churches if their only experience is the traditional model?
One leader I talked to used the Hyatt hotel chain as an illustration. In 2015 Hyatt had 97,000 employees.4 By contrast, Airbnb had 2,300.5 Yet Airbnb had far more rooms available than Hyatt! In fact, three years later they have more rooms available than the top five hotel chains combined!6 How did they do this? They put the hotel industry into the hands of the everyday person. Not everyone has the ability to raise tens of millions of dollars to buy land and build a luxury hotel. But anyone with a smartphone can now rent out a room in his or her house. They rapidly grew to four million listings without building a single facility!
The Church needs to learn from this. When you’re caught in a long-standing model or structure, any alternative seems laughable. But history is full of models, companies, and inventions that became obsolete almost overnight because someone dreamed of a revolutionary new way to do something. The new thing always seems to be simpler and more efficient with fewer barriers to entry.
So what would a revolution in church structure look like? What are the inefficiencies and unnecessary appendages we’re blind and numb to? What would happen if we put the Church back into the hands of the ordinary Christian? Could we see exponential growth at a fraction of the cost? Is Churchbnb possible?
I believe it’s possible because it has been happening overseas for years, and it has been steadily increasing throughout the US. In San Francisco, we have been experimenting with churches led by Christians with full-time jobs. These are professionals in the workplace who pastor small churches out of their homes. These leaders can now transplant anywhere in the world without any need to raise support. They know how to work and pastor at the same time. They know how to work hard and well in the workplace while having a natural setting to build friendships with those who don’t know Jesus. This has possibilities in any city in America as well as any city on earth. Not only have we found Churchbnb to be possible, but it also provides a practical solution to many of the problems facing the traditional model of church.
Buildings can limit a church’s growth. If God wants to move powerfully and save thousands, they won’t fit. Buildings also limit a church’s ability to decline. If God wants to prune the church, we won’t be able to pay the bills. If our church model requires God to work within a narrow “sweet spot,” something’s wrong. I can’t tell you how much freedom I feel now that I’m ministering in a church with no salaries and no potential for any of us to be pastoring a large church. (We try to multiply our churches as soon as they hit twenty people.)
I remember when Cornerstone moved from a two-hundred-seat sanctuary to a four-hundred-seat sanctuary. It was an exciting time. We could all fit comfortably in two services. That lasted for maybe a few months. Then came the third service, then the fourth, fifth, sixth, and satellite services. In less than a year, we were looking for more land or an expansion of our campus.
After years of working with the city and raising funds to build a thousand-seat sanctuary, we moved in. It was an exciting time. We could all fit comfortably in two services. That lasted for a few months. Then came the third, fourth, fifth …
Sound familiar?
Each time I went through this, I thought to myself, There’s no way Jesus would do it this way! Would He really halt Kingdom growth until He found more land, appeased the city officials, raised money, and built a bigger place? It never made sense to me, but I couldn’t think of any other options at the time.
We eventually decided to buy a giant plot of land and worked on plans for the three-thousand-seat meeting area. Then another problem arose in my mind. What if we spend a fortune on the huge sanctuary and thousands of people don’t show up? How would we pay the bills? Would I feel pressured to keep the sanctuary filled in order to keep the budget afloat? Then my ego gets involved. I hate empty seats. Would this cause me to avoid controversial topics and become more political? Paul told Timothy, “The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” (2 Tim. 4:3). What would I do if people began to be turned off by sound doctrine? We would have wasted millions of dollars to build a sanctuary that never filled up. We’d get behind on the payments without enough satisfied givers, and we’d lose it all!
The alternative is worse—I could preach more politically to keep the masses coming. Not to be dramatic, but I would honestly rather die. I have seriously prayed for God to take me off this earth before He allowed me to dishonor His name, and that would include teaching aimed to please the crowds rather than God Himself.
This was hard enough in Simi Valley; now take into consideration the big cities in our nation. Have you ever tried to purchase a large building in a big city? Price out a building that would seat a thousand people in New York City. Even if you could raise the money, the population of New York is 8,537,673.7 What’s your plan for the other 8,536,673? Let’s say the Lord wanted to save 10 percent of the city. Even if you had the billions of dollars to spend, is there room to build enough sanctuaries? Of course not!
Meanwhile, everyone has a home. If it’s possible for a church to fit in a home, then we have an infinite number of potential churches no matter where we go. Going small is our best shot at getting big.
If we don’t consider the possibility of multiplying smaller churches, we have given up on the big cities. We have to at least try. Our current plan shows that we don’t expect God to reach more than 1 percent of the population of the large cities. We must be open to new ways of doing things. Or we can just keep highlighting a couple of “large churches” on the covers of our Christian magazines and pretend we are making a dent.
We all know our world is changing. If we built our current church models on a society that has now changed significantly, why do we assume we must simply keep doing what we’ve always done? Blindly insisting on our current models might not be that different from trying to maintain a Blockbuster video store in the age of Netflix. I’m obviously not arguing that we change the gospel or water down the truth. I’m simply asking us to reconsider the vehicle we use to deliver it. I’m not even trying to argue that we “keep up with the times.” I’m actually calling all of us to go back to Scripture and recover what we’ve lost. If we find ourselves lost on a detour, why not go back to the right path?
One of the greatest advantages of this method is that it requires no budget. It can be completely free. As the churches take offerings, 100 percent of the money can go to the poor and to missions.
From surveys I have studied, it costs on average approximately $1,000 per person annually to attend a church in America.8 That is, if you divide a church’s annual budget (say $100,000) by the number of members (say 100), it comes to $1,000 per person. Depending on location, that number goes up or down. I recently tried to help a church where it cost closer to $3,000 per person to attend. Do the math for my family of nine!
I recognize that I grew up poor, so I have a habit of always trying to find the least expensive way of doing things. I know I can go to extremes, but even a less frugal person must have a hard time reconciling one hundred million Chinese being the Church for free while our American system costs $1,000 a head.
This is not solely about waste; it’s also about sustainability. With each economic downturn, churches shut their doors, never to reopen. With one change to the US tax code, many churches would instantly fold. It doesn’t seem wise to champion only one structure of church that requires a strong economy or specific tax incentives. If a widespread loss of wealth could eliminate our current church expressions overnight, what does that say about our model?
Let’s not forget that as you read this, there are heart-breaking things happening throughout our world. Families are desperately seeking clean water for survival, people are starving, kids are enslaved and being raped. These are tragedies the Church can significantly reduce if we were willing to worship more simply. The financial consideration is a major one. The goal is not saving money just to save money but to literally save lives.
Another major advantage to the smaller gathering style is that it encourages people who would get lost in the background of a bigger church to come to the forefront. When people see there are no professionals, they are more likely to step up and use the gifts they have. It promotes greater levels of investment and contribution from those present if there isn’t a church staff paid to do it for them.
Also, in a gathering of thousands of people, it would be impossible for that congregation to know one another intimately and overwhelming to try. The smaller setting naturally lends itself to greater intimacy. It also makes it possible for everyone to be discipled and for members to hold one another accountable, pray for one another by name, and live like family during the week.
What would be a headache to attempt in the traditional model is natural in this kind of environment.
From the very beginning, the Church has always needed pruning. We’ve always needed reformers and reformations to speak with the voice of the prophet, to call us back to what we were meant to be. Church history is full of reformations of all sizes that have pulled God’s people closer to God’s intention for His Church.
After Christianity became the official state religion of Rome in the wake of Constantine (c. AD 300), the Church became a place of privilege and prestige. People would buy their way into church leadership because this was the way to gain power in society. So God raised up a group of monks who exposed the Church’s wickedness and greed by pursuing God simply and passionately.
When the Catholic Church went so far astray in the sixteenth century that forgiveness of sins was supposedly being sold by the church and human effort was deemed necessary to salvation, God raised up Martin Luther, who himself stood in a long line of reformers like John Wycliffe and Jan Hus, to call God’s people back to a true understanding of grace. When this Reformation became too institutionalized, God raised up Anabaptists to bring reformation to a Church that had already been reformed. There are so many reform movements throughout history: the Celtics, the Moravians, the Azusa Street Revival, the Jesus People. Virtually every denomination we have today began as some sort of reform movement meant to pull the Church closer to God’s intention.
There’s a part of me that fears becoming overly dramatic, comparing ourselves to the Moravians or Reformers. But they were just people! Why not us? I believe this generation can kill the consumer mind-set in the Church and replace it with a servant attitude that thrives on suffering for His name. There is no reason we can’t join with those who have gone before us and be the ones who restore the missional focus of the Church. What else would you rather do with your days?
It should not feel out of the ordinary, harsh, or inappropriate to call the Church to change. Nor should we imagine that our unique expression of Church is the only one God sanctions. Instead, we should be constantly seeking renewal, being ready at any moment to discard the elements of Church that lead us away from God’s heart rather than toward it.
Maybe you should do Churchbnb. Maybe you shouldn’t. I can’t answer that for you. My hope is simply to convince you that there are compelling ways of living as the Church that look nothing like our traditional models. My goal is to get you dreaming, to keep you from settling, to affirm that nagging sense you can’t shake that God wants something more for His Church than what you’re experiencing.
As we have been stepping out in faith in San Francisco, we have seen encouraging signs of growth. People rarely talk about a great “sermon” but often discuss what they’ve discovered in their Bible readings. Fellowship over the Word has become normal. People regularly take hours and even days to be alone in the presence of Christ. They enjoy Him. Prayer gatherings go longer than planned, and rarely are people anxious to leave. Families are opening up their homes to others. They give away cars, possessions, and money out of love. It is perfectly normal for accomplished professionals to be best friends with ex-cons. Homeless addicts have become faithful pastors. When we gather, many come with prayer requests for people they’ve shared the gospel with that week. We recently emptied out all our church bank accounts (we actually took a picture of them all being at $0) to fund the kids’ ministry in Africa—over $300,000 was given by people who don’t have much! People are sacrificing better living conditions to move closer to the projects. Some are being slandered and betrayed yet rejoicing through it. We have around forty pastors now who work full-time jobs. They are missionaries at work and they shepherd and disciple in their free time. We have plenty of problems, but there is plenty of life.
We seem to be seeing more and more of what pleases God most.
This takes me back to where I started this book. I have never been more in love with Jesus or the Church than I am right now. And the intimacy I’ve been experiencing with God has been directly tied to my connection with the Church. We still have so far to go, but I can honestly say my experience with the Church no longer looks drastically different from what I read about in Scripture. God does not intend for that to be the exception; it’s simply what the Church was meant to be.
I have traveled and seen God’s Church multiply and thrive in ways I only dreamed were possible. Now I’m starting to experience it myself. But I never would have experienced this if I had given in to the powerful inertia that pulled me to fall in line with everyone else’s expectations.
When I talk to people about this, they always ask, “Will it work?” I don’t even know what that question means. Do they mean, “Will people show up?” Or “Will they like it?” Or more practically, “Will your church grow?”
These are actually the wrong questions to ask. Jesus never used these things as metrics of success.
Paul actually told Timothy that teaching sound doctrine will not “work”; in fact, it will drive people away (2 Tim. 4:1–5). Yet he was commanded to preach truth because it is what God wants!
Remember, it’s not about what I would like, what others would like, or what “works.” Church is for Him.
Having said that, I think we would be surprised. We may find that people are actually attracted to a group devoted to the presence of God. After all, it was enough to attract over a hundred million people to the underground church in China. It could be that God is waiting for a group of people to strip away all they think will work and devote themselves to what He commanded.
“Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Luke 18:8
I’m sure you have a ton of unanswered questions at this point. That might be a good thing. You are welcome to dig around our website (wearechurch.com) to get more info, but that might be the worst thing you could do. It is usually easier to copy others than to seek God. As I have been insisting, I’m not offering this chapter as a prescription of what I believe every church needs to follow. It just didn’t seem right to lay out everything I’ve written in this book and then refuse to share some of what we have been doing in San Francisco. This may be the very thing God wants to do in your setting. But you won’t discover that without diligent prayer.
My hope is that you will refuse to take the easy route. You need to care about His Church enough to fast and pray. You must believe you play a necessary role in the Church. Seek wisdom and direction from God. He has given you His Spirit so you can know and follow His will. There is no substitute for undistracted prayer. Our country needs to encounter churches that cannot be explained by strategic planning. And I believe everything inside you wants the Holy Spirit to move through you and do more than you can currently imagine. Start praying for this now.
You are going to see God soon. There’s no way I can exaggerate how overwhelmed you will be. The most tragic mistake you can make on this earth is to underestimate how vulnerable you will feel when you see His face. And the wisest decisions you will make in life will be the ones you make with that final moment in mind.
All my life, I have battled a desire to be respected by others. Because of this, there have been many times I cowered out of a fear of rejection. I took my eyes off the future and did what was easiest in the moment. I deeply regret these moments. The Bible tells countless stories of godly men and women who stood for what was right, even when it meant suffering pain and rejection. I often pray for God’s grace, that He would bless me with the courage to follow their examples. I have prayed this for you as well. I really have.
“For, ‘Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.’ But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.”
Hebrews 10:37–39
Jesus is coming. I meet very few people in America who live as if they believe this. He gave the strongest warning ever written. It’s called the book of Revelation. No one has ever given a stronger warning because no one else is capable of carrying out the threats He promised. Out of His love, He gave terrifying warnings to the Church of His day. Over and over, His message was repent or else. He then spent the rest of the book explaining what His “or else” looks like. He did this so no one will ignore His commands, yet we still do. Somehow we have become immune to warnings from almighty God.
What scares me most about His letters to the churches is the fact that some of those churches sound healthier than many I have visited in America, yet He gave them terrifying warnings. I wonder what He would say to us, considering what He said to them:
“Repent or else …”
“I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place” (Rev. 2:5).
“I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth” (v. 16).
“I will throw [them] into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works” (vv. 22–23).
“I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you” (3:3).
“I will spit you out of my mouth” (v. 16).
These churches Jesus addressed would blend right in with the churches you find in your city. Some of them would even be lifted up as examples of church growth. This is why you can’t afford to blindly follow or copy those who are “successful.” You must come under the leadership of truly godly leaders or become one yourself.
Don’t blindly follow the things I have written either. Study the Scriptures. Get alone with the Bible and the Holy Spirit. Seek Him with all your heart and surrender everything to Him. There cannot be anything you hold with a clenched fist, not even family. He is worth it.
Serve His Bride. Jesus is returning soon. We can’t afford to be doing our own thing while His Bride lies unhealthy. We all want to be found at her bedside, broken over her condition, willing to sacrifice anything for her well-being.
Father, thank You for choosing us to be part of something so sacred. Forgive us for the times when our laziness weakened the Church or our pride divided her. Give us childlike faith to have an impact on the Church with Holy Spirit power.
May Your Bride become attractive, devoted, and powerful beyond earthly explanation.
May we each become consumed with her, all for Your glory. Keep our minds fixed on the battle, courageous and humble. Stir our affections daily so we can be found serving Your Bride faithfully when You return to judge. Amen.